Ever notice how we always go round and round the same Grinders vs. Story Authors arguments. Every time its the exact same arguments on both sides and of course nothing gets solved cause we can't do s**t.
Cryptic needs to come up with the solution, and I haven't seen any movement toward any changes.
The easiest solution is to enhance the Foundry UI. Have it divided into subject tabs: Combat, Talky Talk, Exploration, Test, RP, Kirk on Spock fanfic, etc.
The easiest solution is to enhance the Foundry UI. Have it divided into subject tabs: Combat, Talky Talk, Exploration, Test, RP, Kirk on Spock fanfic, etc.
I quite agree. Better search UI is essential and shouldn't really be that hard. I mean, I hate to be a segregationist, but I think if we put story missions and grinders in a separate corner so neither has to interfere with the other, I'd be happy.
And you'd be surprised how popular that last category would be...
Grinder missions exist for a reason.....with the Fleet Starbase,Fleet Embassy,Reputation systems and the hiked cost of weapons,gear and ships that are unlocked with these...Cryptic turned the game into a massive resource sink, and the only way to meet these outrageous resource demands is....to grind.The grinder missions are created to ease the burden of the grind.Will it get better? No,I don't think so....Cryptic is going to add more resource sinks with each season,increasing the 'financial debuff' on the player,which will only increase the demand for missions that will maximize profit for the least amount of time.
If you,as Foundry authors,feel the need to blame someone....blame Cryptic for turning STO into a 'run of the mill grinder MMO' that leaves no place for story content,just the grind.
A solution could be to remove the best Foundry missions (with actual story content!) from the Foundry list,and integrate them into the main game as standalone episodes (with episode title and author credits on starting the mission).In the same way Foundry missions could be part of the exploration clusters.These missions would have special item/gear/doff rewards that can only be obtained by playing these missions.
The PWE/Cryptic sweatshop...not where the game is made,but where the game is played!
Take back your home,end the grind!
Volunteer moderators policing the forums is like a mall cop trying to solve a murder.
Should i do a Foundry mission thats 2 hours long may be bugged and cant complete , Or just plain terrible , Spend 30 minutes just to find this mission ? then if all works right get officer reports reward..........50 fleet marks 960 dilithium
Or
Do 10 to 12 elite stfs on my 6 characters for 9,600 Dilithium 500+ Omega marks 10 to 50 Neural processors and some purple loot drops
Or
Do 12 grinders , 600 fleet marks 12,000+ Dilithium a few million Ec
This is a hard choice and i assume most of us see the problem
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
I quite agree. Better search UI is essential and shouldn't really be that hard. I mean, I hate to be a segregationist, but I think if we put story missions and grinders in a separate corner so neither has to interfere with the other, I'd be happy.
And you'd be surprised how popular that last category would be...
This is where I wish I had actual Borg implants to edit out that memory.....
Anyways, bad slash fics aside.... I think mission categories are a great idea. You could even make choosing a category part of the mission review process. I'd make it so that the author of the mission chooses a category where it goes initially.
I quite agree. Better search UI is essential and shouldn't really be that hard. I mean, I hate to be a segregationist, but I think if we put story missions and grinders in a separate corner so neither has to interfere with the other, I'd be happy.
And you'd be surprised how popular that last category would be...
We don't need categories and more tabs, but a limited choice of tags (roleplay, exploration, combat, diplomacy) to describe our missions could be an interesting solution. And those tags could be given by players so that authors make no mistake.
I hope no one is upset by this comment, but I think we can not blame either Cryptic or what players because you play the missions. Guilt is divided between the two, but I think 80% is more the fault of the players and 20% of Cryptic.
I mean, we can not pretend as creators of missions that people play them, happened to me, imagine, you have no complaints because your missions reach the 1000 notifications, but others who do not write in English we have to put up with much less. Is it a problem of Cryptic?, No, people play what they want and not be compelled to play something much affection they have for our missions. And I tell you with knowledge and anyone can view the list of missions created by me and see the effort that has no reward.
But in my case it's time not to look at the notes, of ignoring what's on the mission and if you do not play anyone, because it does not matter, I do them because I like them, whatever I put in a list if the mission is better or worse.
That hurts what is happening, yes, that Cryptic has been promising improvements in casting, too, but people will play what they want or simply stop playing.
Sorry for the language but is an automatic translator.
People voluntarily playing MMO's complaining about grinding in MMO's never gets old.
Also, the kind of people that would voluntarily play a grinder, knowing it's a grinder in advance, just so they can give it a low rating to mess with it and complain that it's a grinder, are absolutely the last kind of idiots I want designing story missions for me. Because you're probably well below clever enough to write anything halfway interesting.
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
We don't need categories and more tabs, but a limited choice of tags (roleplay, exploration, combat, diplomacy) to describe our missions could be an interesting solution. And those tags could be given by players so that authors make no mistake.
Well, your tags idea is pretty much a more flexible way of categorizing missions. Both have their merits.
, then we're sort of mourning for what the game used to be at launch,
The game has never had this much of a playerbase, not at launch, not 5 months into the game, not a year after launch, and the story missions are always there. With more feature episodes on the way, i honestly dont see why you're complaining. There are immersive storyline missions in the foundry, you just chose to see the farming missions, deal with it.
However, my playtime is often limited, so when I see "estimated playtime 2-3 hours" I often avoid those missions. I can't guarantee that much time in a single sitting.
<snip>
I can absolutely empathize with this. And that's part of the beauty of the Foundry - there are mission lengths for anyones needs. However...
When you do have time to sit down for one of the more epic length missions, should you be 'penalized' with less reward for your time spent than doing an equal number of shorter missions time-wise?
For what it's worth, I thought I would pitch my two cents into this conversation as someone who has used the foundry for both story and grind missions. I admire those of you who author well thought out and beautifully put together missions and I can't even begin to imagine the frustrations you experience when looking at the "Hot" list on the foundry menu. That said (hang in there with me), lately the majority of foundry missions I've been playing are the grind missions and Battleship Royale Rumble. Usually these are the only missions I will do when I have an hour or two after work during the week to play; saving the 1 hour plus "foundry story missions" (for lack of a better term) for the weekends when I have more time to play.
The sole reason for this is: Fleet Marks
In all honestly I don't care about the dilithum that comes from the IOR wrapper, nor do I care about loot drops as both can be acquired outside the foundry.
Fact of the matter is the demands of the fleet starbase project are heavily influencing what missions I play. I'm in a small fleet, and we're hurting for fleet marks. The IOR mission is the most efficient way to get them. As a result, I try to maximize my efficiency by playing the grind missions during the week as they complete within the 30 minute window before I can pick up IOR again, repeat, and go cross eyed because this gets mind-numbingly boring.
In my opinion, the grind mission "problem" (again, lack of a better word) could be easily tackled if Cryptic would address the fleet mark issue. There just isn't a way to earn enough currently without using the IOR mission. The fleet event missions barely pay out anything; yes you can actually earn a decent haul in the 20-person Starbase mission, but you have better odds of winning the lottery than having that happen. Perhaps the community of foundry authors here could lobby Cryptic to do something about fleet marks. For example, if there was I way I could exchange fleet credit for fleet marks, I guarantee you I'd start playing foundry story missions much more often in place of the grind missions as I could just buy marks.
This has turned into a wall of text, and I do apologize. One more thing before I go. I do share a belief that the indexing of foundry missions needs a lot of work. Perhaps some kind of Foundry Wiki or other online database to catalogue and classify missions would be a solution; although that does seem like a lot of work to build and maintain.
Thank you.
Thank you for the T6 Galaxy Class. - I support Tovan Khev. - Please bring back the exploration missions.
Should i do a Foundry mission thats 2 hours long may be bugged and cant complete , Or just plain terrible , Spend 30 minutes just to find this mission ? then if all works right get officer reports reward..........50 fleet marks 960 dilithium
Or
Do 10 to 12 elite stfs on my 6 characters for 9,600 Dilithium 500+ Omega marks 10 to 50 Neural processors and some purple loot drops
Or
Do 12 grinders , 600 fleet marks 12,000+ Dilithium a few million Ec
This is a hard choice and i assume most of us see the problem
As one who doesn't enjoy STFs or grinders, it's an easy choice.
Unfortunately, if you want to advance a starbase/embassy or access any content gated by dilithium or marks, it forces you to play the grindy stuff to get there. Which brings us back to your point.
We don't need categories and more tabs, but a limited choice of tags (roleplay, exploration, combat, diplomacy) to describe our missions could be an interesting solution. And those tags could be given by players so that authors make no mistake.
Something we did in the Mission Architect in CoH (for much the same reason) was include our own "tag" in either the title or description text. It was [sfma], which identified story-focused missions. You could then search on [sfma] or sfma and find those missions.
Of course, only those who frequented the MA forums or MA fansites knew that the tag existed, but at least for those players it provided a way to sift through missions for ones they might be interested in.
It still passed over many good story missions that did not have that tag because those authors didn't know about it. But it was a start in lieu of having an actual tag in the UI.
Something we did in the Mission Architect in CoH (for much the same reason) was include our own "tag" in either the title or description text. It was [sfma], which identified story-focused missions. You could then search on [sfma] or sfma and find those missions.
That is a really good idea. The hard part would be getting the word out, but I think if the more popular authors/missions had tags and a short description of what it meant, curiosity would lead many to learn about the coding. Possibly with a sticky to direct players to in the forums.
Hell, it's a start and better than waiting for an official solution.
For example, if there was I way I could exchange fleet credit for fleet marks, I guarantee you I'd start playing foundry story missions much more often in place of the grind missions as I could just buy marks.
Thank you.
Brian, in your fleet boost shop on your starbase (far left as you enter the store area) you can purchase Fleet Mark Boosts. You get 20% more fleet marks up to 100 for 15k, though it works out to 10k after you trade in the extra marks.
Play Star Trek: Allegiance - my first series in the Foundry
Brian, in your fleet boost shop on your starbase (far left as you enter the store area) you can purchase Fleet Mark Boosts. You get 20% more fleet marks up to 100 for 15k, though it works out to 10k after you trade in the extra marks.
I do purchase those, and they are a nice help of which I am appreciative.
I was thinking more along the line of with projects requiring thousands of marks to complete (just did the Tier 3 starbase that needed 10,800 marks) being able to buy marks would be nice. For example, I'm sitting on 2.5 million fleet credit. I would gladly cash that in for marks since I really don't have anything else to spend it on. Buying marks with credit would free me to run more story driven foundry content.
Thank you.
Thank you for the T6 Galaxy Class. - I support Tovan Khev. - Please bring back the exploration missions.
Something we did in the Mission Architect in CoH (for much the same reason) was include our own "tag" in either the title or description text. It was [sfma], which identified story-focused missions. You could then search on [sfma] or sfma and find those missions.
Of course these 5 characters would account for about half those available for a title in STO. You could cut it down to "-S" I guess but the real solution is a better sorting mechanism in the foundry itself.
I think the REAL issue is with the community itself. Having been posting in the STO forums for a little over a year now, I am firmly convinced that 99% of the complaining is done just to complain for its own sake. Whenever an actual, viable solution to anything is proposed it is ignored, shouted down, or overwhelmed by obviously stupid and unworkable ideas; preferably those which punish the "wrong kind" of player.
So after reading most of this post. I have some questions. I am in a fleet of only 20 active players. we are all friends in RL so were not toging to split up. We need Fleetmarks badly. We have found that by doing a grinder every 30 min for 50 marks (and 600k EC for the 1st run) if we all run it 3 of 4 times we can generate enough capital to fund the current project. So what choice do we have? Cryptic put large Fleet mark demands on our star base projects, Getting 50 marks every 30min for a 10/12 min mission pushed us into Foundry grinders. If they had a fleet queue mission that was that fast, that easy, with that payout. I wouldent be playing grinders, So whats the answer? I think of there was a Doff mission that took 30 min and dropped 50 marks or a fleet PVE mission that had a good payout that did not take forever to queue for and 30-40 min to complete, the grinders might go away.
The "I'm in a small fleet" argument keeps coming up over and over.
Why do you need the fleet marks? Why do you need to have a t5 starbase. What part of this game can't you enjoy without grinding fleet marks?
Choose not to grind. Choose to play and enjoy. Accept that as a small fleet you will not have a t5 starbase for years, if ever. If you really, really want the rewards, grow your fleet or leave and find a big one. Otherwise you will always be at too much of a disadvantage, you will always fell like you're forced to grind and I suspect you won't enjoy much of it. Its a gear treadmill that goes no where, there's no progression for which you need the fleet gear.
But really it makes no nevermind to me. I'd be fine with leaving the grinder missions in there if I could filter them out when searching for a mission and I suspect there'd be a lot of people who would be fine with being able to filter out our story missions. So let's get a better mission selection UI, win/win.
Categorized search UI for the Foundry: Problem solved.
If I were a crafty Cryptic employee I'd tie all the categories to the 11 Commendation types and in addition to current rewards apply a token CXP (50 - 75) of the appropriate type.
Cryptic really needs to start unifying all their systems so they all make sense and synergize instead of laying on bloated grind after bloated grind.
Well my Fleet PVP's and to stay competitive we need the Fleet gear and ships. And beacuse of these missions we are working on tier 4 right now. So for us they are a neccassary evil.
I guess it's a matter of perspective and why you develop the missions. When I wrote missions for the Mission Architect in CoH, I never received a lot of reviews compared to the major authors. This was in part because I didn't advertise them on the forums, nor was I a part of an Architect site or group.
For the most part, I wrote content I wanted to play, often with my wife and daughter. Family and friends played my missions quite often (but of course could only rate once). If others played and enjoyed them, that was icing on the cake.
The same will be true when I take the plunge Foundry authoring, except that I will most likely participate more in the forums. The toolset is more complex, so tips and tricks will be appreciated, and the storytelling capability in Foundry far outstrips the MA. Feedback will be welcome.
I don't think it's that. The reward for making missions is close to zero, so a big part of making it is that you enjoy making them. But with your missions I doubt you spent more than a hundred hours on each one. A major part of the reward is knowing that people out there have enjoyed your work.
Just from a logical standpoint, I can't devote that sort of time I do to my missions if only a handful of people play them. In that case, the time I spend is not balanced out enough by the enjoyment others get out of the mission.
But, look, the truth is, so far I haven't had any reason to complain. I very well may not have any problems when I finally finish my next mission either.
I do completely agree that we need separate categories in the Foundry list.
Of course these 5 characters would account for about half those available for a title in STO. You could cut it down to "-S" I guess but the real solution is a better sorting mechanism in the foundry itself.
Then put it in the description field. It will still show up in the search even if you are searching on titles.
I've found that with other missions when I put parts of titles in the search; if any of those words appeared in the description text of other missions, they showed up in the search results.
I don't think it's that. The reward for making missions is close to zero, so a big part of making it is that you enjoy making them. But with your missions I doubt you spent more than a hundred hours on each one. A major part of the reward is knowing that people out there have enjoyed your work.
Just from a logical standpoint, I can't devote that sort of time I do to my missions if only a handful of people play them. In that case, the time I spend is not balanced out enough by the enjoyment others get out of the mission.
But, look, the truth is, so far I haven't had any reason to complain. I very well may not have any problems when I finally finish my next mission either.
I do completely agree that we need separate categories in the Foundry list.
It's true that I didn't put that many hours into my missions (the MA did not have enough functionality or space allotment for that).
I hope I didn't come off sounding rude in my last post; it wasn't my intention.
When I write for UGC, it's mostly stuff I want to play myself, either solo or with family/friends. I sincerely hope others will enjoy it as well, but that is less of a factor for me.
On the hand, with my book, I do hope many other people enjoy it. That's the primary reason I wrote it. So I do understand your viewpoint there.
From this discussion and how it has progressed, we can identify two solid problems that are probably the biggest.
Number 1: Proportional Rewards / General State of Fleet Building
For what it's worth, I thought I would pitch my two cents into this conversation as someone who has used the foundry for both story and grind missions. I admire those of you who author well thought out and beautifully put together missions and I can't even begin to imagine the frustrations you experience when looking at the "Hot" list on the foundry menu. That said (hang in there with me), lately the majority of foundry missions I've been playing are the grind missions and Battleship Royale Rumble. Usually these are the only missions I will do when I have an hour or two after work during the week to play; saving the 1 hour plus "foundry story missions" (for lack of a better term) for the weekends when I have more time to play.
The sole reason for this is: Fleet Marks.
This guy nailed it. I recently finished grinding out T5 Omega and corresponding rewards and turned back to my fleet, starting in on the FM missions again. And playing those missions I realized I had forgot something. You get like, 17 fleet marks. That's it. A little over a mark a minute. Playing the fleet missions in the bonus block, 34ish is the average for one mission. And the Fleetmarks given by the IOR mission, 50. FIFTY! Daaaaamn. I mean, we know it is a lot, but this is almost ridiculous. There is no contest looking at it logically why "NOT" to do the most efficient way of getting these possible. And compared to the rewards of the "normal way" to get them, it honestly looks like this 50 FM reward is the way you are SUPPOSED to get fleet marks.
That wasn't the intention of Cryptic, they just wanted to say, "Hey, you want to help your fleet, well, you can now do that with foundry missions. Here." But that's not what people are doing. It's apparent that the majority (not just a large number, but THEE large number of most of the online players) think the purpose for the Foundry is the Fleet Mark rewards from the IOR daily. You have a fleet sitting at T3 with some 20 members and it crawls. Here, you can just get 50 marks, bamb. That's how you can help as a little guy. Anything else, right now, is... well... a waste in comparison.
Where this should be good because it gives players who play the foundry a reward, it's viewed backwards. The reward is for playing the foundry. Nothing any of us from players to authors do can change that. Right now the situation of the Fleet Building for mid to small sized fleets and the rewards processed for foundry playing are king.
Until the system for giving rewards is refined further, how people are playing the missions now is how it is going to be.
Number 2: A needed working and decent Search Filter for Mission Types.
We just need a better way to filter and search through missions.
We know this is in the works, any author with history knows that the Devs have gotten lists from us as far as tags we'd like to have or other ways we would like to see the search engine for foundry missions work. This isn't a new idea. We just don't have it, yet. The comments made in here about us needing a way to search for a simple "Rumble" mission or a Story mission are all on the mark. Even if we didn't have a problem with the grinder missions blocking the story mission's exposure (like how it went Pre7) we would still all benefit by it.
These missions, this play style, this isn't new. It's just changed how we see it. The advent of the IOR changes means that the simple nagus dailies (which always had thousands of plays) needed to be refined in a process that pumped out layers and layers of grinders clogging the list. The only people playing them rating them on how it worked for them. Rating system can be a "quality standard" but in general, it's not. It's just a "Like-o-meter". This again isn't new to us.
But since the same simple clicker missions are no longer the same one, they built a list of possible qualifiers that constantly rotate. Work through... It's a system in itself and it's forced to exist side by side with the story content based one we were already having troubles with.
TL:DR Version
Right now, the majority of players are focusing on the rewards, and they may not be wrong if that's how they are playing the game or expect the game to be played. It's a flawed system that has lead here, a new one will be required to ease this burden those players are facing. And it's the only thing that will change the players minds on it. Nothing anyone says. This isn't a problem with IOR as it is with just state of Building Fleets. If the Fleetmark rewards dropped tomorrow, the UGC community would just be blamed for it. Even if it hurt us more than them. Hell, these arguments started two weeks before foundry missions even published post S7.
A better search option at least separates the issues and gives the story content designed missions more opportunity to get played by people who want to play them.
Comments
The easiest solution is to enhance the Foundry UI. Have it divided into subject tabs: Combat, Talky Talk, Exploration, Test, RP, Kirk on Spock fanfic, etc.
I quite agree. Better search UI is essential and shouldn't really be that hard. I mean, I hate to be a segregationist, but I think if we put story missions and grinders in a separate corner so neither has to interfere with the other, I'd be happy.
And you'd be surprised how popular that last category would be...
If you,as Foundry authors,feel the need to blame someone....blame Cryptic for turning STO into a 'run of the mill grinder MMO' that leaves no place for story content,just the grind.
A solution could be to remove the best Foundry missions (with actual story content!) from the Foundry list,and integrate them into the main game as standalone episodes (with episode title and author credits on starting the mission).In the same way Foundry missions could be part of the exploration clusters.These missions would have special item/gear/doff rewards that can only be obtained by playing these missions.
Take back your home,end the grind!
Volunteer moderators policing the forums is like a mall cop trying to solve a murder.
Should i do a Foundry mission thats 2 hours long may be bugged and cant complete , Or just plain terrible , Spend 30 minutes just to find this mission ? then if all works right get officer reports reward..........50 fleet marks 960 dilithium
Or
Do 10 to 12 elite stfs on my 6 characters for 9,600 Dilithium 500+ Omega marks 10 to 50 Neural processors and some purple loot drops
Or
Do 12 grinders , 600 fleet marks 12,000+ Dilithium a few million Ec
This is a hard choice and i assume most of us see the problem
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Anyways, bad slash fics aside.... I think mission categories are a great idea. You could even make choosing a category part of the mission review process. I'd make it so that the author of the mission chooses a category where it goes initially.
My character Tsin'xing
We don't need categories and more tabs, but a limited choice of tags (roleplay, exploration, combat, diplomacy) to describe our missions could be an interesting solution. And those tags could be given by players so that authors make no mistake.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
I hope no one is upset by this comment, but I think we can not blame either Cryptic or what players because you play the missions. Guilt is divided between the two, but I think 80% is more the fault of the players and 20% of Cryptic.
I mean, we can not pretend as creators of missions that people play them, happened to me, imagine, you have no complaints because your missions reach the 1000 notifications, but others who do not write in English we have to put up with much less. Is it a problem of Cryptic?, No, people play what they want and not be compelled to play something much affection they have for our missions. And I tell you with knowledge and anyone can view the list of missions created by me and see the effort that has no reward.
But in my case it's time not to look at the notes, of ignoring what's on the mission and if you do not play anyone, because it does not matter, I do them because I like them, whatever I put in a list if the mission is better or worse.
That hurts what is happening, yes, that Cryptic has been promising improvements in casting, too, but people will play what they want or simply stop playing.
Sorry for the language but is an automatic translator.
https://www.youtube.com/user/NenfisGirfud
Also, the kind of people that would voluntarily play a grinder, knowing it's a grinder in advance, just so they can give it a low rating to mess with it and complain that it's a grinder, are absolutely the last kind of idiots I want designing story missions for me. Because you're probably well below clever enough to write anything halfway interesting.
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
My character Tsin'xing
The game has never had this much of a playerbase, not at launch, not 5 months into the game, not a year after launch, and the story missions are always there. With more feature episodes on the way, i honestly dont see why you're complaining. There are immersive storyline missions in the foundry, you just chose to see the farming missions, deal with it.
I can absolutely empathize with this. And that's part of the beauty of the Foundry - there are mission lengths for anyones needs. However...
When you do have time to sit down for one of the more epic length missions, should you be 'penalized' with less reward for your time spent than doing an equal number of shorter missions time-wise?
Equal time spent should equal comparable rewards.
arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline/#/discussion/1203368/pve-content-a-list-of-gamewide-polishing-pass-suggestions
The sole reason for this is: Fleet Marks
In all honestly I don't care about the dilithum that comes from the IOR wrapper, nor do I care about loot drops as both can be acquired outside the foundry.
Fact of the matter is the demands of the fleet starbase project are heavily influencing what missions I play. I'm in a small fleet, and we're hurting for fleet marks. The IOR mission is the most efficient way to get them. As a result, I try to maximize my efficiency by playing the grind missions during the week as they complete within the 30 minute window before I can pick up IOR again, repeat, and go cross eyed because this gets mind-numbingly boring.
In my opinion, the grind mission "problem" (again, lack of a better word) could be easily tackled if Cryptic would address the fleet mark issue. There just isn't a way to earn enough currently without using the IOR mission. The fleet event missions barely pay out anything; yes you can actually earn a decent haul in the 20-person Starbase mission, but you have better odds of winning the lottery than having that happen. Perhaps the community of foundry authors here could lobby Cryptic to do something about fleet marks. For example, if there was I way I could exchange fleet credit for fleet marks, I guarantee you I'd start playing foundry story missions much more often in place of the grind missions as I could just buy marks.
This has turned into a wall of text, and I do apologize. One more thing before I go. I do share a belief that the indexing of foundry missions needs a lot of work. Perhaps some kind of Foundry Wiki or other online database to catalogue and classify missions would be a solution; although that does seem like a lot of work to build and maintain.
Thank you.
As one who doesn't enjoy STFs or grinders, it's an easy choice.
Unfortunately, if you want to advance a starbase/embassy or access any content gated by dilithium or marks, it forces you to play the grindy stuff to get there. Which brings us back to your point.
Something we did in the Mission Architect in CoH (for much the same reason) was include our own "tag" in either the title or description text. It was [sfma], which identified story-focused missions. You could then search on [sfma] or sfma and find those missions.
Of course, only those who frequented the MA forums or MA fansites knew that the tag existed, but at least for those players it provided a way to sift through missions for ones they might be interested in.
It still passed over many good story missions that did not have that tag because those authors didn't know about it. But it was a start in lieu of having an actual tag in the UI.
That is a really good idea. The hard part would be getting the word out, but I think if the more popular authors/missions had tags and a short description of what it meant, curiosity would lead many to learn about the coding. Possibly with a sticky to direct players to in the forums.
Hell, it's a start and better than waiting for an official solution.
Brian, in your fleet boost shop on your starbase (far left as you enter the store area) you can purchase Fleet Mark Boosts. You get 20% more fleet marks up to 100 for 15k, though it works out to 10k after you trade in the extra marks.
I do purchase those, and they are a nice help of which I am appreciative.
I was thinking more along the line of with projects requiring thousands of marks to complete (just did the Tier 3 starbase that needed 10,800 marks) being able to buy marks would be nice. For example, I'm sitting on 2.5 million fleet credit. I would gladly cash that in for marks since I really don't have anything else to spend it on. Buying marks with credit would free me to run more story driven foundry content.
Thank you.
Of course these 5 characters would account for about half those available for a title in STO. You could cut it down to "-S" I guess but the real solution is a better sorting mechanism in the foundry itself.
I think the REAL issue is with the community itself. Having been posting in the STO forums for a little over a year now, I am firmly convinced that 99% of the complaining is done just to complain for its own sake. Whenever an actual, viable solution to anything is proposed it is ignored, shouted down, or overwhelmed by obviously stupid and unworkable ideas; preferably those which punish the "wrong kind" of player.
one of my missions is entitled "[HoloHistory] Klach D'Kel Brakt" and it all fit.
Why do you need the fleet marks? Why do you need to have a t5 starbase. What part of this game can't you enjoy without grinding fleet marks?
Choose not to grind. Choose to play and enjoy. Accept that as a small fleet you will not have a t5 starbase for years, if ever. If you really, really want the rewards, grow your fleet or leave and find a big one. Otherwise you will always be at too much of a disadvantage, you will always fell like you're forced to grind and I suspect you won't enjoy much of it. Its a gear treadmill that goes no where, there's no progression for which you need the fleet gear.
But really it makes no nevermind to me. I'd be fine with leaving the grinder missions in there if I could filter them out when searching for a mission and I suspect there'd be a lot of people who would be fine with being able to filter out our story missions. So let's get a better mission selection UI, win/win.
If I were a crafty Cryptic employee I'd tie all the categories to the 11 Commendation types and in addition to current rewards apply a token CXP (50 - 75) of the appropriate type.
Cryptic really needs to start unifying all their systems so they all make sense and synergize instead of laying on bloated grind after bloated grind.
I don't think it's that. The reward for making missions is close to zero, so a big part of making it is that you enjoy making them. But with your missions I doubt you spent more than a hundred hours on each one. A major part of the reward is knowing that people out there have enjoyed your work.
Just from a logical standpoint, I can't devote that sort of time I do to my missions if only a handful of people play them. In that case, the time I spend is not balanced out enough by the enjoyment others get out of the mission.
But, look, the truth is, so far I haven't had any reason to complain. I very well may not have any problems when I finally finish my next mission either.
I do completely agree that we need separate categories in the Foundry list.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
Then put it in the description field. It will still show up in the search even if you are searching on titles.
I've found that with other missions when I put parts of titles in the search; if any of those words appeared in the description text of other missions, they showed up in the search results.
It's true that I didn't put that many hours into my missions (the MA did not have enough functionality or space allotment for that).
I hope I didn't come off sounding rude in my last post; it wasn't my intention.
When I write for UGC, it's mostly stuff I want to play myself, either solo or with family/friends. I sincerely hope others will enjoy it as well, but that is less of a factor for me.
On the hand, with my book, I do hope many other people enjoy it. That's the primary reason I wrote it. So I do understand your viewpoint there.
I have no interest in writing for myself. I already have thoughts, and they don't require wrangling with a quirky (to put it kindly) system to enjoy.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
Number 1: Proportional Rewards / General State of Fleet Building
This guy nailed it. I recently finished grinding out T5 Omega and corresponding rewards and turned back to my fleet, starting in on the FM missions again. And playing those missions I realized I had forgot something. You get like, 17 fleet marks. That's it. A little over a mark a minute. Playing the fleet missions in the bonus block, 34ish is the average for one mission. And the Fleetmarks given by the IOR mission, 50. FIFTY! Daaaaamn. I mean, we know it is a lot, but this is almost ridiculous. There is no contest looking at it logically why "NOT" to do the most efficient way of getting these possible. And compared to the rewards of the "normal way" to get them, it honestly looks like this 50 FM reward is the way you are SUPPOSED to get fleet marks.
That wasn't the intention of Cryptic, they just wanted to say, "Hey, you want to help your fleet, well, you can now do that with foundry missions. Here." But that's not what people are doing. It's apparent that the majority (not just a large number, but THEE large number of most of the online players) think the purpose for the Foundry is the Fleet Mark rewards from the IOR daily. You have a fleet sitting at T3 with some 20 members and it crawls. Here, you can just get 50 marks, bamb. That's how you can help as a little guy. Anything else, right now, is... well... a waste in comparison.
Where this should be good because it gives players who play the foundry a reward, it's viewed backwards. The reward is for playing the foundry. Nothing any of us from players to authors do can change that. Right now the situation of the Fleet Building for mid to small sized fleets and the rewards processed for foundry playing are king.
Until the system for giving rewards is refined further, how people are playing the missions now is how it is going to be.
Number 2: A needed working and decent Search Filter for Mission Types.
We just need a better way to filter and search through missions.
We know this is in the works, any author with history knows that the Devs have gotten lists from us as far as tags we'd like to have or other ways we would like to see the search engine for foundry missions work. This isn't a new idea. We just don't have it, yet. The comments made in here about us needing a way to search for a simple "Rumble" mission or a Story mission are all on the mark. Even if we didn't have a problem with the grinder missions blocking the story mission's exposure (like how it went Pre7) we would still all benefit by it.
These missions, this play style, this isn't new. It's just changed how we see it. The advent of the IOR changes means that the simple nagus dailies (which always had thousands of plays) needed to be refined in a process that pumped out layers and layers of grinders clogging the list. The only people playing them rating them on how it worked for them. Rating system can be a "quality standard" but in general, it's not. It's just a "Like-o-meter". This again isn't new to us.
But since the same simple clicker missions are no longer the same one, they built a list of possible qualifiers that constantly rotate. Work through... It's a system in itself and it's forced to exist side by side with the story content based one we were already having troubles with.
TL:DR Version
Right now, the majority of players are focusing on the rewards, and they may not be wrong if that's how they are playing the game or expect the game to be played. It's a flawed system that has lead here, a new one will be required to ease this burden those players are facing. And it's the only thing that will change the players minds on it. Nothing anyone says. This isn't a problem with IOR as it is with just state of Building Fleets. If the Fleetmark rewards dropped tomorrow, the UGC community would just be blamed for it. Even if it hurt us more than them. Hell, these arguments started two weeks before foundry missions even published post S7.
A better search option at least separates the issues and gives the story content designed missions more opportunity to get played by people who want to play them.